Day Three - Mount Rushmore....Benjamin Lincoln, Danny Kaye, and Rattle Bears!

Day Three~ Mount Rushmore! Benjamin Lincoln, Danny Kaye, and Rattle Bears

We are still fighting rain today, but what a great day we had at Mount Rushmore!  It was a relief not to mess with the up and down of the camper today. We will be staying at Custer KOA another night.

 Didn’t rush too much this morning because we didn’t have to break camp.  Breakfast was sausage and potatoes, toast with honey, fruit, and tea.  Mount Rushmore is also on Mountain Time, so we gained 2 hours.  The scenery driving to Mount Rushmore was grand.

 

I decided that everyone should be drinking more water at this higher elevation.  So I did……no one else did……Which caused me to be in such pain when we arrived at Mount Rushmore that I could only concentrate on going to the bathroom!  As we were driving up the mountain, we were seeing some great scenery that was giving us an inkling that it was going to be great.  The kids were watching out the windows all around the car for a glimpse of Rushmore.  We didn’t know where it was going to be as we curved around the mountain.  They finally spotted it behind us, but I refrained from looking because I didn’t want my first view to be out the back window while I had to pee so badly that I thought I might die. 

We paid to park and Mr. Amazing actually found us a spot on the top of the structure.  Even though I was in a sweat and had no idea how far I was going to have to trek to find a restroom, I realized we would need our lunch as a picnic, so before we locked up, Mike and I quickly threw some lunch things into the backpack.  Moms are like that about taking care of their families.  J
 

The first funny thing that happened was that while I was peeing, Natalie went to the restroom too and amazed herself with her own creation of Mount Rushmore!  …….I caught it on camera.  ……….Natalie telling Mike about it…..not the poop!

 

While Natalie and I were having a blast in the restroom, Harrison told Mike that Thomas Jefferson wasn’t one of the presidents on Mount Rushmore.  This statement received blank looks from the rest of the family when we heard it because Harrison is a history whiz.  He explained to us that the rock formation looked a lot more like Danny Kaye than Thomas Jefferson.   This is hilarious, but the Thomas Jefferson DOES look like Danny Kaye!  If you don’t know …..Danny Kaye plays the second male lead to Bing Crosby in White Christmas. 

Guy on the Right?  Danny Kaye!

I was amazed at this amazing sight, but for a reason you probably wouldn’t guess. I couldn’t believe it was so small on the mountain!  It, of course, is very big, but I expected it to be larger.  It was really a surprise.  We snapped off a few bazillion pictures in front of Rushmore.  Then some more in the Hall of Flags….Then some more on the Grand Terrace….

Indiana Flag Caption

 

Stormy Weather

 

 

Next we went down to see the movie and exhibits on the ground floor.  As it was looking like more rain, we decided to get the Presidential Trail thing-y started before the weather got too bad.  Mike rented the wands, which were 15.00 for our family of four.  Unfortunately, part of the loop was closed, so we had to double back on the loop and do some catch up listening on the wands.  We really had a great time on this trail.  We hiked up the stairs to be as close to the heads as possible. Everyone was in high spirits.  Gosh.  To be standing right there at Mount Rushmore would have been a great trip all on its own. 

We really loved this experience, even though we were rained on several times.  We spent at least 3 hours on this experience. Natalie was our expert as she had written a paper on it in 6^th grade.

 As we were climbing the steps, we were laughing because Mike told us that a certain rock was actually Benjamin Franklin’s nose, but he fell off Mount Rushmore and crumbled  Everyone on the trail behind us roared with laughter because the big rock did look like a nose.  Later in the story we were hearing on the wands, it told us that Thomas Jefferson was originally on the other side of George Washington, but they blasted him down with dynamite and put him on the other side.  So the rock probably was a nose!  We spent the rest of the day pointing out rocks that we conceived as other presidents’ body parts.  It got rather amusing. At one point I was laughing so hard as I pointed out a body part that belonged to ……Benjamin Lincoln!  It just came out wrong, but now the kids and Mike often refer to that great historical figure we know as….Benjamin Lincoln. 

When we got hungry, we unpacked our lunch and ate near the Sculptor’s Studio.

Still a little cold here....
 

 

We screwed around for about 20 minutes trying to set the camera just right to take all of us in the picture.

Screwed around for a few minutes on the side of the road trying to set up another group photo by balancing the camera on the hood of the car.....Then Mike remembered....DUH!  We had the tripod in the back of the car!
 

 

We hit the gift shop for a minute.  I found something for Harrison and Natalie to buy for Mike for Father’s Day.  Natalie paid for it. The lady working at the counter was from Richmond, IN, so we had a nice chat.  Harrison needed to pay Natalie back half the cost, so they were figuring out how much he owed her.  He said he couldn’t give her the 3.00 he owed her because he had 300.00 packed so tightly in his wallet that he couldn’t get the bills out.   !!!!!!  300.00!  Packed too tightly to even use the money!  I wish I had his problem!

We wanted to experience the Lighting Ceremony when it got dark too, so after we finished the trail, we opted to visit Crazy Horse and take some of the scenic drives in the area, coming back later for the ceremony.

We drove to Crazy Horse, but I didn’t know there was a 30.00 fee to get into that facility. If it were free, we would have just walked around quickly  to say we did it.   If we would have had more time, we would have done it….maybe…..I knew there was a museum there with American Indian stuff in it.  We have done that kind of thing SO MANY TIMES in Indiana that we just didn’t want to spend our day at Rushmore doing that.  So when the attendant asked for the money at the gate, I was kind of like …….Now what do we do?   So I thought it was nicer to say we didn’t have enough money than to say we didn’t want to see their exhibit.  She told us to go to Dollar General and get some canned goods to donate and she would let us in…..OK……Mike turned the car around and we headed out.  It was kind of funny because the only part we wanted to see, the carving, was visible from the road, but we didn’t know that until we turned around at the gate.  I am sure there was a great exhibit and a very interesting interpretive center, but we just didn’t have the time or inclination to explore it on this short day in the park. 

So then we headed out to one of the scenic byways, Iron Mountain.  We loved this.  Unfortunately, we were only able to experience one scenic drive because the other, Needles Highway, was closed.  There are no words to describe the beauty of the Black Hills.   Hair pin turns and tiny little tunnels that frame Mount Rushmore if you turn around and look through them after passing through……

 

 

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The night before, we were talking about grizzly bears and rattle snakes.  Mike got his vernacular mixed around and accidently called those animals, rattle bears.  Hence a new term was coined.  On our scenic drive we saw some erosion mats that we decided MUST be rattle bears!

 

We entertained the notion of eating out tonight, but our drive ended up close to the campground and there were only hole- in-the-wall diner sorts of places in Custer, so we opted for flounder, baked potatoes, broccoli soup and fruit. 

We went back to Rushmore for the Lighting ceremony, but alas it was raining.  They did the ceremony anyway.  It was very patriotic, which was nice for Memorial Day.  However with the time change, we were sitting in the rain until 11:00 Eastern Time.  It was a nice ceremony, but so foggy that nothing was really lit when they turned the lights on.  Another funny thing happened during this time.  One of the workers had told Mike to bring something to sit upon for the show if it was raining.  The only thing I had with us was an old shower liner that I was planning to do yoga on outside the camper.  (Pie in the Sky ideals before we left!)  I used to keep shower liners on which to do art projects when the kids were little.  Evidently, I had used this liner to spray glue adhesive when I was crafting.  So when we stood up, the thing stuck to our butts.  I mean really stuck to our butts.  We had to peel it off every time we stood up.  Plus it left our pants sticky. 

 

It was freezing cold.  Even though we had packed gloves for the trip, they were in the camper. 

 

The drive back to the camper was foggy and rainy.  We didn’t get to bed until 1:00 AM.  We knew we would have a late start tomorrow! The only regrets for the day was that we didn't go to Custer State Park or see Needles Highway because Needles was closed for road work and we ran out of time.  So we didn't see any bison.  But we did have a great day, none the less.